When Mike Campbell got the call to participate in the Greater Gator Beer Festival last year, he was ready to join the tradition.
The general manager of EndZone, 1209 W. University Ave., provided food and drinks for the VIP area of the beer and food sampling festival.
This year, the City of Gainesville didn’t allow the 16-year-old festival to return to Magnolia Parke, 4700 NW 39th Ave.
“It’s a bummer,” Campbell said. “Things like this, they’re needed. People get together, hang out — it’s high-spirited fun.”
Chuck Fazio and Ricki Black, festival coordinators, said they were told by the city attorney’s office that ordinances or statutes hadn’t changed, only their interpretation.
“It’s all bologna with a capital B,” Fazio said. “After 16 years and nothing changing, it seems a little fishy.”
Gainesville Spokesman Bob Woods said the city attorney’s office decided the city needed to change how it interpreted the ordinance that dealt with alcoholic beverage sales permits for outdoor special events.
In early 2012, a group of city staff determined the code didn’t allow the city to issue such permits in most circumstances, City Attorney Nicolle Shalley wrote in an email to city staff March 7.
During the March 21 City Commission meeting, an item that requested the revision of the ordinance to expand permits citywide was approved.
Fazio and Black have been hosting Florida Beer Festivals for 20 years, after they attended a beer festival in San Francisco. They started in Orlando and brought the festival to Gainesville in 1997.
“It was an immediate hit,” Fazio said.
They host eight to 10 festivals a year around Florida in cities like Boca Raton, Fort Lauderdale and Sarasota, which usually draw 2,000 to 3,500 people.
For the price of admission, each festival features at least 100 different kinds of 2-ounce beer samples from distributors, suppliers and breweries. Fazio said he and Black also seek restaurants to provide free samples because they don’t want people to drink all day without eating.
Last year, Gainesville businesses like Beef ‘O’ Brady’s, Willy’s Mexicana Grill and Loosey’s participated in the festival.
Fazio had hoped to bring the festival back this summer, but he said it will probably have to wait until next year, when the city is done revising the ordinance.
“We have a lot of people very upset,” he said, “but you can’t fight City Hall.”
